


From the Other Side

by AngeNoir



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Dehumanization, Gen, Harpy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 07:58:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14666733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: Steve, apprentice to Dr. Erskine, is about to learn from a recent capture that the world is not as black and white as he has been taught.





	From the Other Side

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Art for "From the Other Side"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14662584) by [narukyuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/narukyuu/pseuds/narukyuu). 



“Look alive, Steve, we have an incoming shipment!”

Steve grunted, rolling off his pallet and trying to open his eyes wide enough not to trip over the mop that may or may not have fallen from its hook. Last night, Dr. Erskine had had him cleaning up the floor around the surgical tables, and the mess there hadn’t really liked the mop. The end of the mop was still sticky and goopy, and he would need to soak it since he’d forgotten last night.

“Steven!”

“Yes, yes, doctor!” Steve called back, groaning. “I’m coming!”

It took him a few more seconds to grab his tunic and throw it over his skinny chest, doing almost nothing to keep out the chill of the workshop, and then stumble his sleepy way over to the doorway.

Dr. Erskine’s workroom was immensely large; as the king’s physician and alchemist, he was held in high honor and given almost anything he wanted. It was larger than a barn, but only just, built like a barn in that there was a loft and walkway halfway up the large, arching walls. That loft and walkway, however, was crammed full of books, jars, specimens, parcels, and scrolls, along with a few stuffed specimens for further study. On one corner sat a tiny, rickety door that allowed access to the main castle through the servants’ quarters, the door that Steve often used as he gathered Dr. Erskine’s meals and laundry, as well as any various errands. Apprentice to the alchemist was a job Steve loved, but he had to admit it was quite a lot of running, and for a boy with weak lungs and reoccurring fevers, it wasn’t exactly ideal. Still, Dr. Erskine worked hard to come up with a cure for Steve’s varying and many ailments, some of which he created himself. He often used herbs and extracts and oils, some which he pulled from the jars or specimens, and others from the herbs that hung down from the wooden structure, swaying in the cool air that blew in through the large doors.

This workroom was at the base of the king’s castle, and Steve had a suspicion that it had in fact been a type of barn for the king’s horses until the king had built grandiose stables closer to the fields where he would take his steed out for fox or boar hunting. However, being at the base of the castle meant they were near the road, and the western gate of the fortress, so the soldiers rarely needed to travel far when they drew their cart to the large doorway. The doors swung open, and were cracked, regularly letting in the cold or the heat, and the worst part of Steve’s job was opening those in the morning and closing them at night, as they were so heavy that they were an onerous task he could only just complete – and the punishment for not completing this task was severe. Securing the doors at night was vital for multiple reasons, not the least because Dr. Erskine created poisons and dangerous materials requested of him by the king.

It was still early enough in the day that the roosters had not begun to crow, and the heavy doors were closed. Heaving with his shoulders and bracing his sandaled feet on the floor, Steve slowly creaked open the first door.

Standing outside were the two soldiers that regularly brought materials and supplies to the workroom, though that was strange in and of itself. The soldiers normally took a week to forage and scour the countryside near the castle to bring back herbs, creatures, knowledge, and information. Coming back within four days of their last visit indicated that they had stumbled across something important.

Grunting with effort, Steve ran to the other door and struggled to swing it open. Watery dawn light streaked the sky, but the sun still hid beneath the horizon. Without really waiting for Steve to move, the cart rocked forward and then entered once the doors were sufficiently wide enough, causing Steve to jump to the side and crush himself as tightly as he could to the wall so that the cart may pass.

As the cart creaked by, Steve saw a few boxes and sacks, but the biggest thing was a giant box – a cage, probably – covered with a rough linen.

Steve tried to smother the excitement he felt. Generally speaking, if a cage was brought in, it meant there was a live creature here for the doctor to study and look at.

The great kingdom of Br’Lyn hadn’t always been a ‘great kingdom.’ Most, if not all, of the people living under the king’s rule had been refugees from a war, fleeing across the forbidding mountains. They had slowly established towns, then cities, then fortresses, until they had created a thriving place to live.

The wildlife had not been happy.

The current king, a young man and his advisor, was the fourth in their history of kings that had ruled over this land. He had agreed that too many people were living in one space; there was not enough land and resources in the cities anymore for citizens. So they traveled out to establish more cities, coopt more land, and protect themselves from the creatures that lurked in the woods.

Dr. Erskine was just one of the many alchemists around the nation who were studying the different creatures, trying to figure out how to disable them so that they may be stopped before they killed more citizens.

There were very dangerous creatures, and others more mild and unlikely to harm anyone. The important work of Dr. Erskine helped city planners and settlers identify which species was more likely to be living in which areas, and how to react appropriately. While Steve himself had never actually been around a live specimen before, as he had only recently become Dr. Erskine’s assistant and the last live specimen brought in to the good doctor had been more than a year ago, he had seen the jars and preserved remains of previous live specimens, read enough of the journals and meticulous notes to know the standard procedure that would happen with this live specimen. There would be a lot of tests done, some studying of appropriate diet and motion and movement, understanding reactions and actions the creature would take. It would take weeks, maybe even months – unless it was a creature Dr. Erskine had already tested. It was possible.

If that happened, though, it probably meant the creature would go into the king’s menagerie. On the one hand, it meant the creature was unlikely to perish, and Steve really didn’t like the way most creatures perished during the tests. But, on the other hand, it meant Steve wouldn’t get to really see the real work the doctor did, how he figured out what made these creatures live and work.

Making quick work of his duties and chores, knowing that he should get his assignment done before going to go see what had been brought to Dr. Erskine, he still was not quick enough to get back to the workshop area before the soldiers had left, their cart empty. Still, he zipped through as best as he could, and put away his tools before rushing back to the Dr. Erskine’s workspace.

Dr. Erskine had cleared his workspace, had laid out the few things that the soldiers had brought. The cage, however, was set in the back corner of the workshop, hidden deep in the shadows and covered by a tarp.

Curious, Steve approached.

“Steven!”

Steve jerked back and turned to see Dr. Erskine raising an eyebrow at him. Shamed, Steve felt his cheeks flush and he ducked his head. “I just… wanted to see,” he said lamely.

Dr. Erskine gave Steve a look before sighing. “I understand youthful curiosity, but you must realize that such creatures can be dangerous. You must never approach a cage brought here to this workspace without knowing what it is and what it can do. Do you understand me?”

“Of course, sir, I understand,” Steve said eagerly.

After giving him a long look, Dr. Erskine’s face softened and he smiled. “But, as I said, I can understand your youthful enthusiasm. I will make the job of caring for this creature yours, will that suffice?”

“Caring – you will keep it?” Steve asked, hearing the rustling in the covered cage behind him.

“It is very important that it stays alive; you will have to fetch the meat for it, and keep the cage relatively clean. Don’t worry – it’s tied up and helpless. A mere adolescent, like yourself, and one of the less deadly of the varied species that populates the wilds,” Dr. Erskine murmured, turning back to the herbs he was sorting and shifting by hand. “Go ahead, you can look.”

Steve turned back to the cage and pulled off the tarp.

Inside the cage, there was a tiny horned bird-man, so strange that it took Steve a moment to really realize what he was seeing. His legs were covered with puffy white feathers, ending in scaled, yellow feet that were three-toed and clawed. His claws were even reddish, matching the bloodstain on the bottom of the cage – must have clawed at the soldiers, though Steve couldn’t really fault him for that. The bird-man was shirtless, hands (and they were human hands, even if the nails looked a little pointed) chained to each other the way his ankles were chained to each other, hands covered in blood as well. There was blood smeared on the bird-man’s chest, as well, and the one wing Steve could see was tri-colored – a muddy green at the top, down to a layer of light tan and then down to the last layer, with the largest feathers, of a rust-red color. In fact… looking closely, Steve could _only_ see one wing – the bird-man may have lost the other, which was both disconcerting and also might be the reason that he was captured in the first place.

“It’s a harpy.”

Steve turned to see Dr. Erskine standing behind him, staring down at the bird-man – harpy – as the harpy tried to crouch away from their eyes.

“Harpies are one of the ruling class of the creatures inhabiting the woods – they are often listened to by other creatures. They have human speech, and they have some level of sentience. They often times attack small villages or farming holds, scaring the citizens and causing the army to move in and root out the harpy nest. This young one is important, and so we will do our best to keep him alive and well for as long as we can.”

Important? From what Steve knew, the inhabitants of the wild were dangerous beasts, not to be parlayed with, let alone kept alive for extended periods of time. Still, Dr. Erskine was the person in charge, and Steve knew to trust Dr. Erskine. He was, after all, a trusted advisor to the king.

“My research tells me that harpies eat fish and seafood – you will have to gather fresh fish, or dried. Perhaps dried. Buying fresh fish is a bit out of my reach. My resources are a tad too valuable to spend on a creature like this.” Shaking his head a little, Dr. Erskine turned back to the various plants before him. “The harpy is tied and restrained well enough that all you need to do is feed him through the bars. Every week, you will have to clean out the cage of any waste or the like, but that will be minimal. It shouldn’t interfere with your other duties, of course.”

“Of course.”

That was the first day the harpy came to the workshop.

 

The third day of taking care of the harpy, Steve had been sweeping what he could reach next to the cage, trying to ignore the stench, when he realized the harpy was rocking himself, clawed hands rubbing up and down his upper arms. It took a brief moment to place, but when Steve realized that the harpy was pulling his left wing around his body – his right wing was completely gone, and his back was scarred and the scars still vivid – he thought that the harpy must be cold. It was certainly getting closer to the colder months, though the temperature in the workshop still felt pleasantly tepid to Steve.

He stared at the harpy for a full thirty seconds before Dr. Erskine’s call jerked him back to his chores.

That night, though, when Dr. Erskine had retreated to his quarters on the second level, Steve snuck out of his alcove and threw a small piece of cloth – a piece of his bedding, though not his own blanket, as he himself knew he would need it in the winter months – at the cage before hurrying away. He could hear the laborious movements of the harpy pulling himself closer to the bars of the cage, to the cloth that lay just outside the bars, and he smiled to himself.

 

 

The fifth day of taking care of the harpy, Steve realized that, oddly enough, the harpy was speaking to himself – singing what seemed to be a soft song. Harpies didn’t have naturally soft voices; still, at the low volume, it didn’t sound all that bad. He stopped by the cage, watching the harpy for a few moments, until the harpy seemed to notice that Steve was watching. Those golden eyes locked onto Steve.

“Hoping for an eyeful, human?”

Steve was so startled he jumped back, tripped on the bristles of the broom he had been holding, and fell on his ass.

The harpy’s lips twitched, head tilted in a distinctly bird-like manner. “You always that clumsy?”

“I didn’t know you could speak!” Steve gasped, and his eyes shot over to where Dr. Erskine was distilling the essence of bloodroot. Lowering his voice, he shuffled closer to the cage (still keeping a safe distance; he wasn’t _stupid_ ). “You can sing? And speak?”

“All of us can sing. And speak,” the harpy responded snidely. “We just don’t speak to invaders like _you_.”

“Invaders?!” Steve said indignantly. “We aren’t invaders, we’re refugees! We just need a place to live, and yet you creatures keep _attacking_ us.”

“That’s what persons do when they’re fighting for their land and their right to live alone,” the harpy growled.

Steve opened his mouth to respond – because, honestly, not having any heart for the fact that Steve’s people had been running from certain destruction only _proved_ that these creatures had no soul, and no morality in their heart – when Dr. Erskine snapped out his name.

Immediately, he dashed away to Dr. Erskine’s table, where the old man was slowly rotating the flask as steam rose and curled into the air. “Yes, sir?’

“Don’t speak with the creature, understand? It’s too used to manipulating people to do what it demands. It is going to try and trick you, and I won’t always be down here to remind you to keep your distance,” Dr. Erskine cautioned. Adjusting his glasses, Dr. Erskine glanced back at the cage and quietly shook his head. “Some creatures are harmless, and are unlikely to create any trouble, but a harpy has connections and the ability to manipulate not just us humans, but other weak-willed creatures that they rule over.”

“They rule over?” Steve asked, confused.

The harpy looked as if it was going to answer, and then it closed its mouth and dragged itself in the furthest corner from Steve and Dr. Erskine.

Looking at it, Dr. Erskine nodded. “Yes, rule over. The creatures have their own hierarchy, as we do, and harpies are at the top. The other creatures obey them – they believe that they can see the future and they revere these creatures. But we know that this is a simplistic view of the world; harpies merely have the ability to understand as we humans do, and that is so markedly different than thinking as a beast that other creatures believe them prescient.”

“If they can think as us… should we really be caging him?”

“It,” Dr. Erskine corrected.

Steve licked his lips. “Yes, sir. If these creatures can think as humans can think, should we be caging it right now? It is a sentient creature—”

Dr. Erskine chuckled, and patted Steve’s back. “You know, that is exactly what I had thought of when I first began studying these creatures. I believed that if they can be spoken to, they can be reasoned with. However, they refuse to come to any type of compromise, any type of cooperative agreement. If they had their way, they would chase us back to our killers, raze any evidence of our existence to the ground. That is not how sentient creatures treat one another.”

Steve bit his tongue, because he could understand why Dr. Erskine would say that. Dr. Erskine lost his family, immediate and extended, at the hands of their persecutors. He had been one of the first of their people here, on this land, that broke ground and built this settlement up from a few scraggly, slanted huts into the massive castle it was today. Dr. Erskine was searching for a home, and the people denying them a home were not to be entertained or compromised with.

Still. Their persecutors had been sentient creatures, humans from another clan that had decided to wipe their clan off the map. The desire to kill or destroy did not make someone less human.

Dr. Erskine returned to his work, and when Steve turned back to the harpy – who was rubbing his horns against the bars in a slow, repetitive motion – Dr. Erskine called Steve over to help him.

 

“Hey, what’s that song you’re singing?”

The soft crooning noise stopped, and when it didn’t start again, Steve sighed. “It’s okay. You can sing. I think it’s calming.”

After another long pause, Steve rubbed the back of his neck and looked up at where the door led to Dr. Erskine’s quarters. “I… I get where Dr. Erskine is coming from. I do. But I know you can talk, and I know you can think, and I know you can be sad. Your song sounds sad.”

The harpy didn’t respond.

With a soft sigh, Steve retreated back to his sleeping cot and curled up under the blanket.

Quieter, but still present, the harpy began to croon again his sad song.

 

The tenth day of taking care of the harpy, Steve realized something and paused outside the cage, the bag of dried fish in one hand and the bucket of the harpy’s waste in another. “Hey – my name’s Steven. You can call me Steve.”

The harpy turned to look at Steve incredulously.

“I just – I realized I don’t know your name, or anything. I don’t know how old you are. I just thought maybe you wanted to know about me, so my name is Steven. I was one of the last born in the land of our ancestors; my mother made the journey with me strapped to her chest, before she took ill and died. I am… well, not really an adult, not fully. But almost. I’m sixteen summers old.”

The harpy still just stared.

Biting his lips, Steve shrugged his shoulders. “Well. If you wanted to know, you know. Now you do.”

As Steve began to walk away, the harpy whispered something.

“I’m sorry?” Steve said, turning around.

“My – my people call me St’AnTonih.” The harpy nervously rubbed at the base of his horns and smiled tentatively. “I am – I have seen the turn of the seasons sixty-seven times, and I am also not really an adult, though my sire consistently informs me I need to act more… mature. That I did not take things seriously.” The tentative smile turned bitter, sour. “It appears as if he was correct.”

Steve winced. “Well… I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” he murmured.

“Sorry enough to let me go?” the harpy asked dryly.

Steve licked his lips.

“That’s what I thought.”

Steve slunk away.

 

The fourteenth day of looking after St’An… St’An… The fourteenth day of looking after Tonih, Steve noticed that the harpy’s wings were more listless, and movements more sluggish. “Hey, you okay?” he asked, coming up to the cage bars.

The harpy barely opened his eyes, Tonih’s golden eyes slits.

“Do you need something? Are you sick?”

“Is something wrong, Steven?” Dr. Erskine asked from behind him. Steve turned around to see the elderly man staring curiously at the cage.

Gesturing to the harpy, Steve murmured, “I think he’s sick. I mean, I think it’s sick.”

“Certainly appears so, though why…” Dr. Erskine trailed off, and then shrugged. “A more varied diet, or a larger portion, perhaps. We’ll see if that improves its disposition.”

Steve nodded jerkily, already trying to think how to improve Tonih’s diet. Dr. Erskine was an expert on these creatures, and said fish was important, but Dr. Erskine was also more inclined to treat this person as a beast instead of a person with his own knowledge and understanding.

Deciding to cover all bases, Steve brought more dried fish from the stores as well as some of the vegetables, like carrots and peas, he personally liked to eat. He brought them back to the cage and placed them at the edge of the cage, like offerings. “I don’t know what you eat. Is it not enough fish? Or is it that you need something besides fish?”

Tonih looked at Steve through tired eyes, and Steve noticed how pale and drawn the harpy had become. “I know why your master keeps me here. I do not want to live for this.”

“Then don’t live for his reasons. Live because it’s important to have hope, to keep living for the sake of living,” Steve whispered, gripping the bars.

The harpy rolled onto his side, pulling his one wing over his body like a shield. “Better to die like a dog than live like a pawn,” he murmured.

The wording seemed very odd, but Steve was more focused on the immediate problem – that Tonih seemed to be dying, or at least very, very sick, and needed to get better. “Hey, what’s your home like?”

Tonih’s head turned to look at Steve.

With a shrug, Steve pointed to the workshop. “I, I mean, I am grateful for Dr. Erskine. He healed me, helped me, took care of me when my mother passed. But I have lived here, within these walls, for my life. I know the safety of this town, of these walls, and these borders. I’ve never been to the forest.”

After a long moment, Tonih’s eyes seemed to glaze a little, and a soft smile appeared on his face. “In the deeps of the forests, there are glens untouched by human hands. Pure, and where the dryads dance and the fae sing. Where centaurs gather to regale each other with tales, and where wide grassy knolls can hide goblins and trolls.” Then, Tonih’s voice grew softer, and gentler, and he whispered, “Where up in the tree tops, you can see for leagues. The sun sets on the tops of the pine, dusting them gold, and the birds sing around you. That is home, and that is what I miss.”

When the harpy had trailed off, silent and quiet, Steve murmured, “That sounds beautiful.”

The harpy startled, and looked at Steve. Then he clicked his tongue, such a bird-like noise that Steve nearly thought it had not come from Tonih but rather from a bird that had gotten trapped in the workshop. “Humans. You come to our land, and you take it all. Were you to come to my forest, you would uproot the trees, and tear the earth open for your pleasure. You would sully the water with your waste, and you would cover the sky with the smoke from your fires. My home, my land, is not safe with you, and I cannot ever return.”

“You might,” Steve whispered urgently. “You might, really! If Dr. Erskine is keeping you alive, surely you must realize it is for a reason. Don’t you want to know why?”

Tonih met Steve’s stare levelly.

“You need to keep up your strength. You need to eat,” Steve implored.

Heaving a sigh, Tonih reached for the fish. “I need more. My people eat constantly, throughout the day, and this… one meal a day is barely enough to assuage my hunger.”

“Right, okay. So you don’t want the vegetables?”

Tonih’s hand jerked for the carrots and peas. “I did not say that. Merely that I need a lot to eat.”

Squinting, Steve asked slowly, “So… you can eat foods other than fish?”

“Of course,” Tonih grumbled. “How much fish do you _think_ is available in the middle of the forest, anyway?”

 

On the twenty-third day of caring for the harpy, Steve had put the broom up and had begun sorting Dr. Erskine’s herbs when he overheard voices coming from the front of the workshop, by the wide doors. Dr. Erskine had gone there to dump out old stores that had gone poisonous over time. He hadn’t returned, and Steve had simply assumed that he was talking to one of the many shopkeepers that lined the cobbled street.

“—not pleased. The Harpy King does not believe we hold his son, and until we can prove that we have the prince of the harpies in our hands…”

“While I understand the need, it is highly unlikely that, once we show that we have the child, the king may attack us on principle. One wing? The child may as well be dead to them.”

Steve crept closer and saw that Dr. Erskine was speaking with one of the castle guards – a commander of the king’s personal protection. Steve didn’t know the gentleman personally, but had seen him talk with Dr. Erskine often.

And the commander would know what was going on, particularly with a harpy that wasn’t being used for tests and had to be kept alive and well-cared for.

Steve didn’t like the picture that was forming at all.

 

On the twenty-fifth night of caring for the harpy, Steve waited until the darkest part of the night, at the very end of the first night watch, to creep over to the cage where the harpy was sleeping. “Hey, Tonih. Wake up.”

The harpy’s legs kicked a little, the stiff bar between them unmoving and making the motions jerky. “Steh-vahn?” the harpy murmured, blinking open those liquid gold eyes.

Steve stared at them, at the inhumanity in them, the curiously curved horns, the clawed fingers, the scars and the single wing. He could turn away. His people needed the land, desperately. They were consistently being attacked by the creatures of the forest that viewed the land as theirs, and would make Steve’s people pay in blood to take a single section of it. If this harpy remained here, a prince, the king had a bargaining chip, a potential weapon to hold over the Harpy King’s head should leverage be needed.

But there was everything else. There was the harpy’s knowledge of the human language, indicating some willingness to learn, to compromise. There was the fact that this harpy was an adolescent, like Steve himself, scared and trying to comfort himself in a cold cage. There was the fact that no one should use their own fear and trauma and bad past to justify inflicting the same on another creature. There was the fact that just because people opposed you didn’t mean that you could treat them like beasts and exterminate them in the same way.

It came down to the fact that Steve had lived his whole life, learning about how his people had nearly been wiped out from people that had thought they had the right to take and take and take, and now that he was staring down at this creature – this wondrous, amazing, human creature – he realized that he could not perpetuate this any further.

He might die. He knew that, realistically, he was the harpy’s captor, and jailor. He had not objected when Dr. Erskine referred to him as an it, he had gone along with every order Dr. Erskine had given him, regardless of his own worry about whether such orders would harm the harpy, and he had treated the harpy as one would a very intelligent pet instead of a true friend. And that was only from the harpy’s side – if he did this, he could never live here again. He would be burned at the stake, labeled as ‘misguided’ and ‘bespelled’ and a cautionary tale for young people in the village to never listen to the words spoken by one of the fantastical creatures that shared their world. If he was caught in the middle of this, he’d be put to death instantaneously – as would Tonih.

But he could not just sit by, and watch this happen.

Quietly, he slid the key into the cage lock, as gently as he could, keeping an eye on the door up on the balcony. Tonih sat up, eyes suddenly wide and wondrous in the dark of the workshop.

“You will have to go quickly. Do you know how to swim?” Steve hissed in as quiet a voice he could manage.

“Barely, but I will do so for this,” Tonih replied, voice so full of fragile hope that it nearly brought Steve to tears.

Licking his lips, Steve entered the cage, nervous. Tonih, for all that he was calm when talking to Steve, had come in covered in blood not just his own. He’d scratched and clawed at Dr. Erskine before, and had been violent and furious in turn, during those first two weeks. Those talons could rend flesh from bone, eviscerate Steve, do any number of terrible things.

Carefully, so carefully, he opened the manacles around Tonih’s ankles, letting the bar-chain fall to the ground. Those scaled feet flexed, sharp talons moving much too close to Steve for comfort, but Steve could also see that the skin, under where the manacles had been, was torn and bleeding, scarred from pulling and jerking movements.

Tonih sat up on his knees, wincing a little as he pulled his ankles under him, and held out his wrists.

Still slowly, still carefully, Steve unlocked Tonih’s wrists.

Once the manacles were off, Tonih threw himself at Steve, and Steve jerked back, terrified – but Tonih was clutching him, holding him close, his single wing curving around as if to cover Steve, hug him as Tonih’s arms were hugging him.

“Thank you, my friend,” Tonih breathed. “Thank you, thank you. I cannot begin to explain how desperate I was, and how you gave me hope in the middle of this nightmare.”

“You’ll need to go quickly, now, when the first night guard isn’t yet over but it’s been quiet and long enough that they’ll be more likely to miss your shape. If you exit through that crack of the front door, and turn towards the sun’s rising, you’ll come across the castle walls, and a drain. The bars are not so close as to keep us young boys from slipping underneath, though you will have to hold your breath and swim through first. That will take you out of the immediate castle walls, but there are still farming towns and merchant guilds and all kinds of things around the city of the palace, and you’ll have to move carefully.”

Tonih stared at him a long moment before saying hesitantly, “You did not have permission to do this, did you?”

“Ahhhhhhhh…” Steve said, drawing the sound out a long time, until he realized there really was no escaping the question, and he sighed. “I did not have permission, but I could not leave you there as a bargaining chip for people to fight over. I may not agree with your people’s decisions to keep us from safety, and I may not agree with your violent messages… but we are…” He paused, and trailed off. The king, the guard, even Dr. Erskine – they all believed that this was the right thing to do. Maybe he really _was_ bewitched or bespelled or whatever the hell the formal charge would say. Still, he believed he was morally right to stand for mercy, for compassion, and for caring.

What he had been doing here with the harpy had been none of those.

“Then you will come with me. Be the first human to see the sights that I see. Witness what I spoke about all these days. My father may not like humans, but he will accept one who saved my life.”

“You’re asking me to run away with you?” Steve asked slowly.

Tonih moved to the open door of the cage and stepped out, then looked around at the four walls. “For all that you did, for all that you are doing. You said that I was in a cage, but for all that those bars were a cage, the walls of this place are just as entrapping. You can run away and become rich, or run away or be poor, but until you leave these walls and this job and this cage, you will always be bound to it.”

In shock, Steve stared at Tonih, at the single wing lifted up in the weak moonlight, the smile on Tonih’s face, the feathers ruffling a little in the night breeze.

“Besides,” Tonih said sadly, “if you stay, they will rightfully blame you, and kill you, when all you were doing was setting free a prisoner. If you come with me, no one will kill you. Or, if they do decide to kill you, they will do you the favor of informing you of your crimes and giving you a chance of a fair trial before sentencing.”

Confused now, Steve squinted at Tonih, who blushed a little and looked away.

“What I mean is, the only crime punishable by death in my land is the person who would harm the environment, Tonih moved to the door and turned back around.

“Come with me,” Tonih repeated.

And Steve listened.


End file.
